


Things That Travel Faster Than the Truth

by d_aia



Series: Similar, but Not the Same [2]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, POV Elizabeth, POV Elizabeth Braddock, POV Outsider, POV Psylocke, Post-X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 10:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7219267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d_aia/pseuds/d_aia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth meets Erik's son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Travel Faster Than the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own the movie (and characters, locations, personal histories etc as are shown in it).This is the work of fanfiction. 
> 
> A/n: Don't ask me where Wanda is, she's in the same place as the movie which means: 'I don't know'... ^^; Oh, and you don't have to read the other story in the series to understand this one.

Elizabeth was filing her nails, listening to the plan Erik was outlining. She was doing it for the money and the challenge, but as far as causes go, it was a good one. Experiments on mutants always disgusted her so.

He had finished describing her role, and she was half paying attention on what the others' parts were because it was a good idea to know what your team was doing. Or where they were for that manner. She had just noticed an inconsistency, and was opening her mouth to ask about it, when she heard yells.

Elizabeth sat up. “Erik,” she said, but he had already stopped.

Both of them had better senses since the debacle with En Sa—Apocalypse.

Erik left the table, going outside to see what was happening, gathering a ball of miscellaneous metal on the way. The rest of the team followed him at a more sedate pace, each flexing their powers, to make sure the could access them in a second. She knew because she did the same, but used a different exit. Elizabeth was counting on her presence going unnoticed until the right moment.

She got out by the servants' entrance in the old mansion they were using. A great, big house, with trees down the path, and even a little lake directly opposite.  Erik had a sort of passion for big, old houses, which while baffling for everybody, it was also luxurious. At the moment, though, it was plain annoying because it took so much time to subtly go around it. When she reached the scene, she really, really wanted to circle the house again.

Because this was what she found: the silver-haired speedster trussed up like a turkey, hands and feet tightly bound by sheets of plastic, heavy ones by his movements; a scared boy trembling a few steps back; a shouting loon and his goons that had plastic weapons pointed towards Silver and her team respectively, and a news team that hurriedly installed their cameras given some other goons offering the incentive.

Everybody was all drama, all the time.

Elizabeth took her hand off her katana, she won’t  get close enough to use it this time. Her mutant powers would have to do. Not her sword, but she made a bright magenta whip. She waited for the right moment. Right for all kinds of reasons, her survival and the cameras dutifully factored in.

Erik must have suspected that she was somewhere, lying in wait, because he signaled her to stand down. That was good, since she was already debating the merits of interfering, but it was unexpected. He wasn’t the sort of man to find a peaceful solution to problems. Then it hit her, she had to listen to what the loon was saying in order to make a decent evaluation of the situation. Apocalypse had taken the loon cake, and all others were cheap copies, who should just shut up, give up, and go home.

“You will now see how true suffering feels!” the man’s eyes bulged as he shouted.

Yes, after death camps, solitary, and the murder of his wife and daughter, obviously Erik needed Ranty’s help in understanding _real_ suffering.

“Bro!” Silver shouted. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Shut up!” The man heaved, his gun aimed at Silver's temple looking none too stable. “I am doing this for all of us, the humans who have to suffer at the mercy of a mutant monster.”

Erik growled.

“Who suffered? How did you suffer?” Silver asked, his chill still present. But dwindling.

“My wife was in Egypt, working as a journalist when that freak leveled the city,” the man spat.

Apparently even insane people were right from time to time. His sadness was understandable, even if his actions were not. And Erik would kill him eventually for threatening another mutant. It was a mess.

“I was there too,” Silver offered.

“I know,” the man accused. “He wasn’t alone.”

“I was with the people that stopped the blue guy,” Silver clarified. “He broke my leg. Stuck me to the ground.”

“Shut up,” the man sneered.

“Why? I’m sorry for your wife, I am. But people died all over the world. People, mutants and human, were hurt.” Silver tried a shrug. “He was a mutant, but so were we. I mean, it’s not even like we said we’d go  to Aruba when we heard. We were there. Mutants stopped him.”

“So what?! You didn’t stop him in time!”

Ah, this was the point where the insanity shows its face.

“What’s your damage, bro?” Silver asked, annoyed at last.

“This mutant,” the man yelled, pointing at the trembling boy and ignoring Silver, “can perceive genealogical lines.”

“That’s a nice one,” Silver said and smiled toward the boy. The smile was fake.

“Shut up!” the man said through clenched teeth.

“Why are doing this?” Silver started to tremble. Kind of late in the play, if one were to ask Elizabeth. “I understood, you feel like you need to avenge your wife. That’s nuts, but that doesn’t explain why him. He's not an easy mutant to find. We took a left at nowhere land, passed whatever-the-hell, but before the I-don't-know desert. And there were security guards, guards that you had knocked out. You had to work to find him. So why him?”

“They said on the news that he was there,” the man accused. “The agent lady said he helped take out the mutant that was causing all of it. He helped!”

Erik looked caught between being so exasperated he almost rolled his eyes, and being so disgusted that he was considering vomiting everywhere.

“I said it before,” Silver said trembling harder. “But I'm going to say it again: that’s nuts! You’re nuts!” And yes, he was angry.

“The boy said this is your _son_!” the man yelled.

Fuck.

Erik stopped everything. He stopped manipulating the metal, he stopped blinking, and he stopped breathing. He just stopped.

His son. Fuck! And again, fuck! This was about to turn into a bloodbath. How did the man hope to get out alive? He was two seconds away from saying goodbye to breathing. The man was about to find out that his crazy wasn’t up to snuff.

The journalists were horrified, eyes wide as saucers, and camera taping.

“I don’t…” Erik began. “I don’t believe you.”

Elizabeth agreed.

Silver swallowed and went into a fit, trembling faster than the eye could see… directly out of the plastic binds. What?! The ones that were on his hands fell with a bang. Elizabeth didn’t think the journalists' eyes could get any wider, or that the boy's trembling could not get any worse, but she was obviously wrong.

“Hey.” Silver waved.

The next second, Ranty fell in a love with a tree and had run into it, a goon flipped into second one, three others were hanging by their belts in another tree, and five had their shoe strings tied to each other. The trembling boy got duct taped to the news van, and _their_ tape was on the ground. The journalists’ themselves were the new, proud owners of tranquilizer darts, and were currently swaying. Elizabeth barely had time to wonder at the destruction and havoc Silver could wreak, got the idea that it wasn’t smart to piss him off, and the journalists’ fell down. Or they would have fallen down, but from one blink to another, they were carefully arranged on the grass.

“We should probably call the police,” Silver offered.

Elizabeth stepped out of her hiding place. She made a production of looking around, all the while thinking that something must be up with Erik's family. They all were capable of huge amounts of chaos. Apparently, Ranty’s crazy wasn’t even enough to stop the son.

“Hey there, pink horseman,” Silver said cheerfully.

Elizabeth glared at him, though it didn’t seem do deter him any.

“Was he right?” Erik asked.

Silver swallowed. “You weren’t supposed to find out like this.” He shuffled a little, rubbing at his eyes. They looked red. “I was supposed to tell you.”

“Is it true?” Erik asked, face blank.

With one last rub, Silver gave up. “Yes.” He zipped out.

“Erik?” Elizabeth asked in the oppressive silence. “Are you doing all right?”

Erik slowly shook his head.

Silver zipped back into sight. He had on Lucia's sunglasses. They were soon perched on his forehead, his eyes scrunched shut.

“Are _you_ all right?” Erik asked. His hand rose awkwardly, before it dropped.

“Running without goggles.” Silver made a disgusted noise. “I'll be all right. Listen, can I borrow the glasses? I'll give them back. Promise. I'm not a kleptomaniac. Anymore. I'm trying to do better. I'm going to give them back.”

Lucia was looking at Silver like he might explode, but she nodded.

Silver, winning grin in place, gave her thumbs up.

“Who…” Erik trailed off.

“‘—told me?’ ‘Who is my mother?’ I'm sorry, you weren’t supposed to find out like this. The only reason I didn’t  tell you was because—”

“You looked at me and saw a monster.”

“No,” Silver said, very slowly. “It was because you had just lost your wife and daughter. It seemed cheap. You were grieving. It just didn’t seem like the right time.”

“I think we need to talk, soon. But first, we _need_ to take care of this.” Erik took a deep breath. “Can you… Charles is going to be here in ten minutes. I don’t  want to leave you alone.”

Silver looked at him, startled. “Sure,” he said with a smile.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you! If you want to comment (or just talk to me) you can do it here or on my [tumblr](http://e-alexandrescu.tumblr.com/).


End file.
